As always with any Book Review, these are one person’s opinions. That includes the great, the good, and the bad.

Violet Chain is a story of two people on roads to recovery. One to recover her self-worth and identity, and the other his life as a man and not a character he plays in the playboy world he’s created.

I received this book to form questions for an upcoming interview and not to do a book review. And truthfully I wasn’t intending to do one. But one of the mottos I’ve put forth is “Read a book, write a review.” And with that in mind I could not keep from writing a review.

Violet Chain falls into the genre of Romance. Throw in some sex and you’ve got what you might think of as your typical fare these days. For me, I look underneath the surface of a story to the characters center, what’s driving them. I am not setting centric as much a I am emotional and thinking centric when I read a book.

The book starts off with Violet Townsend, the leading lady of the book, walking in on her fiancé in a sexual situation with another woman at their engagement party. For Violet, the world flips upside down and her journey begins to define herself as Violet Townsend and not the girlfriend of someone. She’s alone. She’s hurting in a deep way. This guy has messed her up emotionally and mentally. She doesn’t want a man.

Not even 48 hours passes and she meets Chain Alexander, millionaire playboy builder of malls across North America. Self-made man who likes to be in control and doesn’t know how to live any other way. That is until the night he meets his best friend’s fiance’s best friend, Violet. The two forces meet and almost everyone tries to stop the inevitable from happening.

While one person attempts to become emotionally detached, the other finds himself feeling emotions he’s never experienced before. And he can’t do a blessed thing about it. From one night stands to one woman dreams.

The characters are believable on the level in which they are played. They stay true to who and what they are as the story goes along and as the characters grow in their emotional lives. Kahele does a great job of character building and giving them layers of personality. The supporting cast is great. Some are humorous at times, some annoying, and some you think were written about people you know. And none of them are perfect. In other words, we get real, albeit on a big rich people scale.

But the rich are people to and they get just as screwed up in life as the rest of us and have to deal with it. That’s what the author Kahele has recognized. People are the same no matter what, take a relationship and just put it in a setting you want to. We can all connect with characters that are authentic on the base emotional levels.

I believe there were only a very few areas of concern with the book and that was the speed of change in Violet’s character, her apparent personality that is pointed to throughout the book differs greatly from this new Violet that we see. I kind of see how it works being that there is an emotionally stressful situation that perhaps cracks her a bit or flips a switch during certain moments. That part doesn’t really take away from the story as it progresses, but it gave me pause for a moment so I am mentioning it. This was perhaps the only big issue of character believability for me.

The part of Harrison, the cheating fiancé, was a bit repetitive to me in his scenes and annoyed me to no end. Now this annoyance was intentional I am sure. You are not supposed to like the guy.

The final area is the ending. Now there is a sequel coming in November, so the ending isn’t as final and shocking with that in mind. The new Violet isn’t liked by everyone in the book, unlike the old Violet.

My favorite take away from Violet Chain is Chain Alexander. That could just be the guy in me. Kahele describes certain situations and emotions from a man’s perspective perfectly. I could actually feel what Chain was going through. The writing was urgent at times when it needed to be to convey what Chain was feeling.

I guess that is really the great thing about the book, the pacing of the sentence structure and word usage. Kahele does a great job of switching between the soft and touching to the hard and edgy to carry you along where she wants you to go. She divides the chapters up between first person in the first half of the chapter being Violet and the second half being Chain. I have to say I like this better than the full chapters that are done much the same way. These are smaller bites and don’t take you away from the either character’s perspective for too long.

When J. Kahele gave me the book, she warned me about the sex in it being edgy. She knows of my sensibilities. All I can say to that is, lady, you don’t know me as well as you think. The sex scenes are well done without being over the top and unbelievable and graphic. Some of the situations are awesome. Oh that balcony. Mm, mm, mm.

Recommendations

For the most part this is a safe book for most adults. Nothing too extreme. The ending disturbed me a bit. I’ve taken about a week to think about it and been able to decide that with a sequel coming, I can handle it. I might ask to read the next one to see what happens. A lot of Kahele’s fans trust her and have no problems with it so far, so I’m going to trust her as well to handle it as well as she did the rest of the book.

The Rating– First off, a 4 out of 5 from me is a great book. The score is lower than I expected, but I think the reason is the ending for me personally, and just little factors that took away from my own overall enjoyment. The book was well written, great layers to it. Don’t let a 3.6 keep you from the book. I am a tough reviewer.

About the Author

“I am a proud mother of three daughters who are my absolute complete existence. I write to relieve the scattered thoughts that stream through my mind, constantly. My biggest downfall is that I am a huge procrastinator, which makes my life at times hectic!”

Ronovan is an author, and blogger who shares his life as an amnesiac and Chronic Pain sufferer though his blog RonovanWrites.WordPress.com. His love of poetry, authors and community through his online world has lead to a growing Weekly Haiku Challenge and the creation of LitWorldInterviews.WordPress.com, a site dedicated to book reviews, interviews and author resources. For those serious about book reviewing and interested in reviewing for the LWI site, email me at ronovanwrites (at) gmail (dot) com to begin a dialogue. It may not work out but then again it might.

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